Tejashwi Yadav announces Bihar seats, Congress gets Patna Saheb

Patna, Mar 29: The 'Mahagathbandhan' in Bihar has announced the seat-sharing and the candidates with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav saying that the pact is 'unbreakable.'

Out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, polling would be held in 31 constituencies in phases three to seven between April 23 and May 19.

Addressing a press conference, Tejashwi Yadav said that Congress will be contesting from the Patna Saheb and RJD from Begusarai. RJD will be contesting upon 19 seats, which includes Gopalganj, Siwan among others. Senior leader Sharad Yadav would be contesting the polls from Madhepura and Tanvir Hassan will be contesting from Begusarai.

The development comes a day after the Darbhanga Lok Sabha seat, represented by former test cricketer Kirti Azad who recently quit the BJP and joined the Congress, emerged as the new bone of contention in the Mahagathbandhan, with the RJD stating that it wished to field its veteran leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui from the seat.

On Thursday, Azad told mediapersons that he will be contesting only from Darbhanga, though party sources say they are cajoling him to shift to the Champaran region and that contentions on other seats such as Supaul had also been resolved.

Bihar PCC leaders held a meeting with the party high command in Delhi over the matters, following which BPCC chief Madan Mohan Jha told reporters, "There are some issues but they have been discussed and everything will be sorted."

Hours before the RJD leader's presser, the Congress had released another list of candidates which consisted four constituencies from Bihar. The Congress fielded Pappu Yadav's wife Ranjeet Ranjan from Supaul and former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar from Sasaram. The other two names were Ashok Kumar from Samastipur and Neelam Devi from Munger.